World of our fathers : the journey of the East European Jews to America and the life they found and made / Irving Howe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Howe, Irving, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews, East European--New York (State)--New York.

Jews, East European.

Jews--New York (State)--New York.

Jews.

Immigrants--New York (State)--New York.

Immigrants.

Yiddish language--New York (State)--New York.

Yiddish language.

New York (N.Y.)--Ethnic relations.

New York (N.Y.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (727 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Open Road Integrated Media, 2017.

Summary:

The National Book Award-winning, New York Times -bestselling history of Yiddish-speaking immigrants on the Lower East Side and beyond. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, two million Jewish immigrants poured into America, leaving places like Warsaw or the Russian shtetls to pass through Ellis Island and start over in the New World. This is a "brilliant" account of their stories ( The New York Times ). Though some moved on to Philadelphia, Chicago, and other points west, many of these new citizens settled in New York City, especially in Manhattan's teeming tenements. Like others before and after, they struggled to hold on to the culture and community they brought from their homelands, all the while striving to escape oppression and find opportunity. They faced poverty and crime, but also experienced the excitement of freedom and previously unimaginable possibilities. Over the course of decades, from the 1880s to the 1920s, they were assimilated into the great melting pot as the Yiddish language slowly gave way to English; work was found in sweatshops; children were sent to both religious and secular schools; and, for the lucky ones, the American dream was attained-if not in the first generation, then by the second or third. Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, World of Our Fathers explores the many aspects of this time and place in history, from the political to the cultural. In this compelling American story, Irving Howe addresses everything from the story of socialism, the hardships of the ghetto, and the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed scores of garment workers to the "Borscht Belt" resorts of the Catskills in colorful and dramatic detail. Both meticulously researched and lively, it is "a stirring evocation of the adventure and trauma of migration" ( Newsweek ).

Contents:

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Introduction by Morris Dickstein

Preface

1 Toward America

1 Origins

The World of the Shtetl

Ferment and Enlightenment

The Start of Social Change

The Prospect of America

2 Departure and Arrival

Crossing into Europe

The Lure of America

From Border to Port

The Ordeal of Steerage

At Ellis Island

A Work of Goodness

"Hordes" of Aliens

Open Door-and Closed

The Jews Who Came

2 The East Side

3 The Early Years, 1881-1900

The First Shock

"A Gray, Stone World"

A New Tempo, a New Way

Peddling and Sewing

Going to the Land

In the Tenements

The Implacability of Gentleness

A Chaos in Hebrew

Dislocation and Pathology

Voices of the Left

What Migration Meant

4 Disorder and Early Progress

An Early Combat

New Tastes, New Styles

Spreading Across the City

An Experiment in Community

The Failure of the Banks

Beginnings of a Bourgeoisie

What the Census Shows

A Slow Improvement

5 Slum and Shop

Working in the Shops

Rising in the World

Ways to Make a Living

6 The Way They Lived Then

At the Heart of the Family

Boarders, Desertions, Generational Conflict

The Inner World of the Landsmanshaft

Shul, Rabbi, and Cantor

Versions of Belief

From Heder to Secular School

Dreamers of a Nation

A Bit of Fun on the East Side

Up into the Catskills

Matchmakers, Weddings, Funerals

To the Brim

7 The Restlessness of Learning

"Americanizing" the Greenhorns

A Visit to the Cafes

A Passion for Lectures

The Self-Educated Worker

Fathers and Sons

8 Growing Up in the Ghetto

Parents and Children

Delinquents and Gangs

Girls in the Ghetto

Going to School

Jewish Children, American Schools

Immigrants and the Gary Plan

City College: Toward a Higher Life.

9 Jewish Labor, Jewish Socialism

Early Weaknesses

The Girls and the Men

The Triangle Shirt Fire

The Jewish Working Class

The Socialist Upsurge

The Meaning of Jewish Socialism

10 Breakup of the Left

Civil War in the Garment Center

Dual Unions-and the Furriers

A Network of Culture

Recovery, Growth, Adaptation

From Politics to Sentiment

11 Getting into American Politics

Getting on with Tammany

The Jews and the Irish

Maneuvering Within the City

Low Roads, High Roads

12 American Responses

The Native Reformers

Stage, Song, and Comic Strip

From Henry Adams to Henry James

Legal Rights, Social Rebuffs

3 The Culture of Yiddish

13 The Yiddish Word

Sweatshop Writers

Poets of Yiddishkeit

The Rise of Di Yunge

Three Yiddish Poets

The Modernist Poets

Literary Life on the East Side

Yiddish Fiction in America

After the Holocaust

An Unyielding Voice

14 The Yiddish Theatre

The Vital Hacks

Time of the Players

A Theatre of Festival

Art and Trash

An Art of Their Own

15 The Scholar-Intellectuals

Where Should They Go?

Dean of Critics

A Gifted Voice

A Disinterested Historian

16 The Yiddish Press

Kindergarten and University

A New Journalism

Tell Me, Dear Editor

Voice of Immigrant Socialism

Other Papers, Other Voices

The Time of the Day

Writing to the End

4 Dispersion

17 Journeys Outward

Entertainers and Popular Artists

Painters and Sculptors

The American-Jewish Novelists

The New York Intellectuals

18 At Ease in America?

The Suburbs: New Ways to Live

Into the Public Realm

The Holocaust and After

Israel and the American Jews

A Fear Beyond Escaping

The Immigrant Survivors

Epilogue: Questions upon Questions

Image Gallery

Reference Notes

Glossary of Yiddish Terms.

Bibliographical Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright Page.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed September 6, 2017).

ISBN:

9781504047555

1504047559

OCLC:

1002189439